morsels & sauces

This cookbook is not for the faint of heart.  In Maricel Presilla 's new cookbook,  Peppers of the Americas , one must be a serious connoisseur of peppers, either as a gardener or a cook. One does not dabble with this cookbook. Instead, one must commit. Do you want the history of this capsicum? Do you ache for a breakdown of pepper anatomy and heat? Do you long for pretty little naturalist drawings of calyx, flower, and seed, and then hope for well-shot, full-color photographs of hundreds of peppers? Do you need the Latin name, the approximate lengths, and a thoughtful catalogue of the growing season of each of those hundreds of peppers? Again, I ask of you, are you a serious connoisseur of peppers?  If you answered yes to even just one of those questions, then this just might be your new cookbook.  In fact, I think this is the perfect book for my friend at   Bat Barn Farm . He's a food geek, and this book is for geeks. Period. Presilla is the fi...

Oh people, I made this dense chocolate tart for Halloween Night, and it was decadent and rich, if a bit boozy. Who wouldn't want that as a descriptor, either for themselves or for their desserts? As I mentioned in a recent post , I have been nursing one doozy of a cold, so I have not been able to stay atop my cooking, but I did make this tart for Halloween Night. We surrounded ourselves with family at one set of my in-laws houses, and in between bites of a dinner, we answered the door as children pleaded for candy. Favorite costume: adult male dressed as a banana with a small child dressed as a monkey on his shoulders. When dessert time came around, we sliced up this rather rich tart. We did have to make a recipe and a half because I did not have a 9 1/2-inch tart pan. I did, however, have a much larger square pan and in-laws who were willing to take the leftovers off our hands. People, I am not happy with the fact that I have gained five pounds since the beginning of ...

Ree se's Peanut Butter Cups, people ! Or at least something like that. It's almost the fourth of July! That means time for insane dessert treats.  This one qualifies. My mother, back in Illinois, has been complaining about the overabundance of rain and out here in California, we're aching for it. I am sitting in a coffee shop in Fort Bragg with a cup of peppermint tea, the fog is burning off, I just finished reading a collection of short stories ( The Hall of Small Mammals ) that I found delightful and strange, and I am contemplating a day of cooking (from my new cookbook, Honey & Co. (certainly, I will be featuring it here soon)). This is what vacation looks like. Before coming up to Fort Bragg, though, I took some time to convert my recently made chocolate ice cream from Big Gay Ice Cream  into a total diet-busting shake, and let me tell you, it was worth it.  Sure, sure, y ou can make all of this from store-bought ingredients, which...

  If this were high school, I am not sure Bryan Petroff and Douglas Quint of Big Gay Ice Cream  fame would have asked me to sign their yearbooks. I would have admired from afar their insouciance, their use of Bea Arthur and a unicorn licking a rainbow ice cream cone as mascots, and their snarky humor, and then perhaps they would have rolled their eyes that I would have even used the word insouciance . And certainly Petroff and Quint's debut cookbook is going to force you to muster up those awkward teenage years known as high school, for their collection of recipes is designed as a yearbook complete with an introductory letter from Monsignor Anthony Bourdain (Headmaster), somewhat naughty signatures in the front pages of the book, chapters separated out into each class year (freshman through senior complete with class photos in front of a laser-light backdrop), and fake advertisements at the back, including those for eyebrow shaping (by Debi, ask about the...